Does the definition of sodomy include beastiality?

The definition of sodomy as being the same as beastiality is not agreed on by the Oxford English Dictionary or any other authoritative source that I could find. The references to this usage are all over a hundred years old. It is an archaic definition.

In looking this up, I discovered that one hundred years ago many people equated sodomy with ALL non-procreative sex and sex outside of marriage because this is how many religious leaders defined it. (As somebody else mentioned above.)

I also found a series of letters to the editors by doctors in the Bristish Medical Journal that were published during the 1940s that denounced an older doctor for equating beastiality with sodomy. The younger doctors wanted to reserve the word sodomy for that thing English schoolboys did to one another (i.e. butt fucking.) The older doctor claimed that sodomy was a common term for beastiality when he started practicing medicine in the late 1800s. The doctors also thought that the problem of English schoolboys fucking each other could be solved by co-ed educational environments.

I guess this is why it is so hard to define what safe sex is. It depends on what the meaning of the word is is.

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